Humans are intelligent humanoidcreatures that live in cities on the plains. They are one of the races playable in Adventure Mode. Their buildings are made entirely of wood, and usually include several houses and shops, and a tavern. They are primarily interested in trade, and generally send large caravans in summer.

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The first human caravan will arrive in the summer of your second year, provided a human civilization has access to your site. The caravan will have wagons, which carry lots of goods, but need a 3 tile wide corridor. Humans may also send a representative if their civilization is big enough, and having more skilled trading nobles will upgrade him to a Merchant Baron or Merchant Prince, who have larger caravans.

Humans will attack if enough humans are killed while visiting your area. This is especially dangerous if a human noble has been to your fortress - all traps that he/she observed while walking inside are inactive for any invading humans. If you succeed in defeating a human siege, they may send a diplomat to make an offer of peace.

Creating a settlement underneath a human town confers a number of advantages. The human soldiers and guards, in the process of protecting their town, also protect your fortress. In addition, all the objects present in the town are assumed to be your property, which provides your fortress with a huge starting value boost. You may also reclaim the items present inside the various buildings, giving you a nice early cache of weapons, trade objects and furniture. Finally, the wood from the buildings may be acquired by deconstructing them, or undermining the structure.

Because human towns are so open plan, kobold thieves can easily steal goods and return with better equipped forces. The benefits of human guards may also be less than great because their human children have a fondness for punching hippos, elephants and other large beasts capable of going on a rampage. (They can't tell man from dwarf).

Human towns usually have many different shops. They typically have swordsmen and plenty of drunks to recruit. The leader and quest giver of a city is called the mayor, who can generally be found in the tavern in the center of town.

Humans characters are, in every way, the middle road between dwarves and elves. Their starting equipment is metal, but the type of metal depends on how advanced that particular Human civilization is. Humans might have copper, bronze, or iron equipment. Humans may start with skill in any weapon (as opposed to the more limited lists that elves and dwarves use). Humans lack the special damage resistance of dwarves and the raw speed of elves, but they are one size category larger than dwarves. This makes them hit harder and absorb more damage (though it may not make up for their lack of damage resistance). Another downside for humans is that they have a life expectancy of 60-120 years, which is a lot shorter than dwarves and especially elves, but this is unlikely to affect anyone except a serious Fortress Mode addict.

They may buy both armor and weapons at human towns, and may scavenge dwarven weapons from abandoned fortresses. Masterpiece armor is extremely rare in human shops, but exceptional equipment is common, and temples contain abundant loot, so a human adventurer can easily pick up a set of exceptional gear.

To start a "Human Town" (or, alternately, an Elven Forest Retreat, Goblin Tower or Kobold Cave) one need only add the tag [CIV_CONTROLLABLE] to the entity_default.txt file in the /raw/objects folder, under whichever race you wish to play. You should only do this after having already generated a world, otherwise you may encounter bugs. It's also advisable to only have one race playable at a time by removing the [CIV_CONTROLLABLE] tag from all but the race you wish to play, for similar reasons.

In order to build trap components, you will also need to add the following to the Human entry in entity_default:

Gameplay adapts remarkably well, as if Toady intended us to do this, although there are a few bugs mostly relating to traders from certain races not arriving at your fort. The Elves can carry with them many different pets upon embarking, and the races will start with the appropriate food and plants (for example, humans have prickle berries instead of plump helmets by default). Also, one of the 7 humans you start with will be a "warlord" and will not work.

In the future, humans will be more xenophobic than right now. Thanks to this xenophobia, demons are less likely to take over a human Civ.

Toady One (04.May.2009) [1]:
Humans are far too xenophobic and afraid of strange things to allow a demon to go through some mechanic like a duel for warlord status -- the same tag that'll make humans consider pointy ears and glowing red eyes less attractive or scary in general might control this.

This doesn't mean that demons can't overtake a group of humans.

Toady One (04.May.2009) :
[] It would be cool if eventually the demon can exploit the religious process to turn a group of human bandits into a demon cult or something, but for now, it's just straightforward violence and domination. A demon might pass into the rulership of humans in this way as well, but it would have to not get killed by them first. []